Public health: The fug of mixed messages

The cigarette billboards of the 80s were neatly captured in Viz. "Tabs Are Great" was splashed across a poster, above tiny letters reading "tabs will kill you, probably". Six decades have passed since Richard Doll's work linked smoking and cancer and nearly five since TV ads were banned, and yet on fag packets eye-catching logos still compete for space with images of blackened lungs. Mixed messages about nicotine are as familiar as they are bizarre, but it could just be that the fug will soon finally clear.

The health secretary Andrew Lansley yesterday published a paper announcing he would go ahead with Labour's ban on shops displaying tobacco, and would also consult on forcing the product into plain, unbranded packs. As ever, where the door is left ajar to lobbying, it would be unwise to bet on it being closed. Wiggle room has been preserved by insisting on the need for evidence, but this will be hard to come by, since plain packaging has not yet been enforced anywhere, though it soon will be in Australia. The millions the industry spends on branding ought to be evidence enough. Recall Tony Blair's seemingly cast-iron pledge to "ban tobacco advertising" – and then his screeching U-turn following Bernie Ecclestone's visit to his Downing Street den – and you might conclude that Marlboro reds and the trademark purple of Silk Cut will outlive their average consumer.

But Mr Lansley deserves real credit, for seeing off Whitehall's kneejerk deregulators on shop displays, and for keeping alive hopes of more radical action. Plain packs, after all, would complete a transformation from ordinary consumer product into a regulated evil, bringing to mind the way that drug law reformers talk about medicalising heroin. The very possibility is an extraordinary one for a Conservative-led and market-minded government. It is also an extraordinary one for Mr Lansley, given his Que sera, sera willingness to entrust other aspects of public health to voluntary agreements with alcohol and junk-food producers.

Tobacco, it is true, still causes the most preventable deaths, and it is unique in that even modest indulgence can prove a mortal sin. The industry's documented double dealing has landed it with a restrictive international treaty, although it is increasingly apparent that alcohol and food producers engage in similar lobbying. What really makes tobacco different is that this is an epidemic on the wane, which lingers disproportionately on the margins of society, whereas as junk food is ubiquitous and alcohol, the favoured vice of the well-to-do, is becoming more so. The political will to get tough on lifestyle sins has a great deal to do with how far the swing voter has already given them up.